Sana Labs vs Riiid

Riiid has a disclosed valuation of $1B, while Sana Labs's valuation is not publicly available, making a direct size comparison difficult. Riiid employs 100-500 people.

Riiid has raised more in total funding at $220M, compared to Sana Labs's $136M — a gap of $84M. Combined, the two companies have completed 6 known funding rounds.

Riiid leads with an Awaira Score of 80/100, while Sana Labs sits at 60/100. That 20-point gap reflects real differences in funding, scale, and traction — it's not a vanity metric.

Sana Labs was founded by Joel Hellermark in 2016. Riiid was founded by Jang Young-jun in 2014. Visit each company's profile on Awaira for a full founder biography.

Sana Labs: Sana Labs builds an AI-powered learning management and knowledge management platform for enterprises, combining a corporate LMS with an AI assistant that can surface relevant knowledge from internal documents, meeting recordings, and past learning content in response to employee questions. The Stockholm company products span structured course creation, AI-generated training content, and a knowledge base that learns from employee interactions to surface relevant information at the point of need.\n\nThe company raised approximately $80 million including a Series B round from investors including EQT Ventures, Balderton Capital, and NEA. Sana counts Spotify, Aesop, and multiple technology companies and professional services firms among its enterprise clients, deploying its platform as a combined LMS and internal knowledge assistant. The AI search and generation capabilities allow HR and L&D teams to maintain knowledge bases that employees can query in natural language rather than browsing static document repositories.\n\nSana competes in the corporate learning market against Workday Learning, Cornerstone, and 360Learning, as well as newer AI-native knowledge management tools including Notion AI, Guru, and Glean. Its differentiation is the combination of structured learning content management with generative AI knowledge retrieval in a single platform, reducing the need for enterprise customers to maintain separate LMS and knowledge base systems. The company Stockholm base gives it strong access to Scandinavian enterprise clients where digital workplace adoption rates are among the highest in Europe. Riiid: Riiid develops AI-powered adaptive learning and test preparation technology, most notably the Santa TOEIC app, which uses reinforcement learning and knowledge tracing algorithms to personalise English proficiency test preparation for individual learners based on their demonstrated strengths and weaknesses. The Seoul company builds AI models that predict which questions each student should practice to maximise test score improvement per unit of study time.\n\nThe company raised approximately $220 million including a Series D from investors including SoftBank Ventures Asia, Owl Ventures, and GoodWater Capital, reaching a valuation exceeding $1 billion. Riiid Santa TOEIC app has been used by millions of Korean learners preparing for the TOEIC English proficiency exam, which is a mandatory or strongly encouraged credential for employment at major Korean corporations. The company has expanded its AI tutoring technology beyond TOEIC into other standardised test preparation and enterprise training applications.\n\nRiiid competes in the AI education market against Duolingo, Khan Academy, and Korean education technology companies including Classting and Mathpresso. Its reinforcement learning-based adaptive learning system, which optimises study sequences for individual score improvement rather than presenting content in a fixed curriculum order, represents a technically sophisticated approach to personalised learning that distinguishes it from content-first edtech platforms. The proven consumer use case in TOEIC preparation provides a revenue foundation and model validation that the company is extending into new learning domains.

Riiid got there first, launching in 2014 — that's 2 years of extra runway. Sana Labs didn't arrive until 2016. In AI, that kind of head start means more training data, deeper customer relationships, and a bigger talent moat.

Both Sana Labs and Riiid report about 100-500 employees. Team size is a rough proxy for scale, but lean AI companies routinely punch above their headcount.

Yes — they're direct rivals. Both Sana Labs and Riiid compete in AI Education, targeting many of the same buyers. If you're evaluating one, you should be looking at the other.